Monad Launches Testnet and Sends Test Tokens to 9 Million Wallets

Monad, a highly anticipated Layer 1 blockchain, launched its public testnet on Feb. 19 and is encouraging active Ethereum participants to try out its native protocols.

Monad shipped its testnet alongside an ecosystem directory that includes 50+ dApps, infrastructure, and integrations on the test chain for users to explore.

Following the launch, the network distributed testnet tokens to nearly nine million active addresses on Ethereum, encouraging EVM-native users to use the chain.

On testnet, the network is processing 41 transactions per second (TPS), which is more than double Ethereum’s roughly 15 TPS, but is still a far cry away from Solana’s 4,600 TPS.

The EVM-compatible blockchain touts quick block times and high performance through its parallelized execution structure, which allows transactions to be processed simultaneously, as opposed to sequential execution used by traditional blockchain networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Monad raised $244 million across two funding rounds in 2023 and 2024, led by Dragonfly and Paradigm.

Co-founder Keone Hon spoke on the release and said, “we hope that the Monad Testnet period is a fun and energetic experience for developers and users alike - a time for everyone to experiment, learn new skills, or hack that idea together that’s been on the back burner.”